Checking for updates still takes forever

If I were conspiracy minded, I’d think that MS is deliberately making the Win7/8 update process harder so the Win10 AutoUpdate process looks better. So far this morning I have nine Win7Ent machines, in different geographical locations, that have been stuck on “Checking for updates…” for 45 minutes as of this writing. Over the past few months the “Checking…” process has taken longer and longer, but it’s never before been as slow as this. Has anyone else complained?

I’m just now getting some update dialog boxes, after well more than an hour. After installling, a high percentage have at least one failing update, although it’s a different update in each case. What this means is that I have to reconect to the computer, relog in, and install the failed update. Grrrr.

Good rant from GK: If I were conspiracy minded, I’d think that MS is deliberately making the Win7/8 update process harder so the Win10 AutoUpdate proc[See the full post at: Checking for updates still takes forever]

My WU was taking about 45 minutes (which is too long but I know not nearly as long as some have been experiencing), and svchost would be taking up a lot of CPU every day. Today, my WU takes 1 minute, but svchost is *still* taking up a lot of CPU. It is so aggravating. (Note that I have not yet installed kb3138612, which has supposedly helped some, but I’ve heard that before about other patches….)

Me too – WU took just over an hour today on Win7 Home (AMD 4-core 3.5GHz), whereas it normally takes 10-20 minutes. But I noticed that after it finished, though no new updates appeared, two versions of KB2952664 that I’d previously hidden have now disappeared! Anyone else noticed anything odd?

My updates are always offered within about 5 or 10 minutes of switching on, it’s the commencement of the downloading that takes a while sometimes. Perhaps MS have a sense of mischief and plan it so that the longer I take to decide to install the updates, the longer they take to decide to download them :)!

More seriously, it’s my reckoning that they have switched a lot of the patching hardware to Windows 10, given that that is where their priority lies.

I have a fast Win10 machine with fast internet and it still took “forever” today DL and install updates. I didn’t clock it but the extra time required was very noticeable. Must be their servers in general; doesn’t seem they are favoring 10 (IMO)

a, you probably have most patches to date installed including the Recommended Updates which makes the svchost.exe task a lot easier for not having to calculate supersedence so much. Please note that KB3138612 supersedes other 29 updates which if installed would make the load on svchost.exe even lighter. Good outcome anyway 🙂

It’s been worse for me, Woody. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 patches almost immediately after they went live, around 5 hours ago, on both of my laptops and my parent’s computer.

I have a virtual (Hyper-V) Windows 8.1 installation for testing purposes. After I finished doing my Windows 10 patches, I did those one. They were relatively quick, approximately 15 mins including reboot.

I went to the store to get a few things, then came back and started my older Windows 7 laptop… and 2 hours later it still says “checking for updates.” Be advised that the only patches it needs are the April 2016 ones.

So it would appear that Microsoft might have put the extended support OS on a “secondary” tier of updates? Since they haven’t been known for being completely transparent, it wouldn’t shock me.

15 mins after I posted this the Windows 7 patches finally showed up. I had walked away, but started the install process as soon as I returned.

But yeah, I think you’re on to something here Woody. With the way Microsoft’s been aggressively pushing Windows 10 onto users that don’t want it, it’s entirely possible that they’ve made extended support monthly updates a more tedious process.

I’ve experienced the same thing the past two months of updates. When I first click update it comes up with “none.” Then when I click update again, it checks for updates for for upwards of a half-hour. Didn’t used to be like that.

Hi, Woody,
Every thing has been fine until this morning. Started the PC and the AVG failed on startup. Had to uninstall it and reinstall it.Looked at the Perfor.Mont. and fund allot of things running.
Now I checked for updates,Looked them up and I’m confused?? I don’t see any KB# posted to know what’s What. Could you or anyon help please? Thank’s Here a screen shot.

I had the same problem, taking hours to access the Update Patch site.
I Installed these updates, KB3102810 and Kb3083710 from Microsoft:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810
I now get the update site in a few minutes, mostly about 2 minutes.

My experience, not only this time, but repeatedly since the pushing and shoving for Windows 10 ramped up, is the same or very similar to GK (4.12.16)– “Check for Updates” (Windows 7 Home Premium) takes 45-60 minutes, and download/install of any selected is also excruciating. Many thanks to Woody for his expertise and this wonderful website.

I waited for over an hour this morning on my W7 and then closed the WU window, then went back around noon and waited for 45 mins and finally the updates appeared.
I installed the “helper KB” kb3138612 last month and it didn’t help but I noticed that it was back in the optional updates again so I D/L it again. Must be a new/revised edition. I guess I’ll see if it speeds things up next month.
My W10 laptop updated fast so I assume they are putting all their resources into W10 updates.

Woody, I noticed that Windows update was taking ages today when it normally completes update searches in under 2 minutes. I noticed the CPU utilization was stuck on 25%, but it was constantly switching CPU core utilization to 100% on different cores over and over again. I then checked my system services to see if anything weird was going on there and noticed that BITS service was not started (as I have it set to Manual).

If memory serves, it’s supposed to get started by the wuauserv whenever it starts (I have that set on Manual as well and use a script to check for updates at my leisure). As soon as I started the BITS service, within a matter of seconds, Windows Update magically quit checking for updates and reported that it had found 9 important updates. So I think it’s something to do with BITS not getting started by wuauserv as it should that’s causing the inordinate update search times.

My fix was to just alter my script to start the BITS service and then start wuauserv instead of relying on the latter to start the former on its own. Then my script waits until I close the Windows Update Window, and manually stops BITS and wuauserv and sets BITS back to manual, as it tends to set itself to Automatic any time you do a Windows Update.

Jeez nevermind, must have been pure coincidence because I did another Windows Update check after I installed the others and rebooted, and it’s taking agggeeessssssssss. Restarting BITS service has no effect. CPU core utilization is still the worst thing I have ever seen. I’m not even sure you could code a more poorly performing multi-threading routine if you tried to.

I’M sorry I left out some miss spelled words,
I’M so busy trying to get things done.
Can anyone PLEASE help me??
As said Above I do not know if those KB# are good or not??
Also the Resource Mon. is still reading and writing?
Without installing anything.
Thanks all of You,
D.J.

Tried this on a typical medium end desktop computer (CPU: Intel E5500, 4GB ram), not super recent, but by no means slow. Clean install of windows 7_SP1x64 — final MSDN official refresh disk (latest official 7 disk one can get) with all proper drivers from the manufacturer (auto driver update off, ick!). Clean install was last week, no browsing, no antivirus, windowsdefender disabled.

Installed all MS updates except:
KB2592687
KB2830477
KB3021917
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB3123862
KB3035583
KB3139929
KB2952664
as of last month. Longest windows update check as of last month’s clean install was 20 minutes with 100% on one core (every update check EXCEPT FOR the first one and the last one [when there were no updates left] took exactly 20 minutes). Update checks after that took 60 seconds (but only when there is nothing to find/do).

I did some performance profiling of and entire 2 hour update check. I will post some of it in the next reply since it probably won’t format well.

Called recursively, 20+ layers deep:
wuaueng.dll!CUpdatesToPruneList::AddSupersedenceInfoIfNeeded
May account for ~99.8% of excess CPU usage. (this % includes ALL the other calls I mention because it calls them directly or indirectly)

Digging deeper into why this function is so inefficient…

wuaueng.dll!CUpdateDetectInfoList::FindNewestUpdate:
Called every time wuaueng.dll!CUpdatesToPruneList::AddSupersedenceInfoIfNeeded. This may be redoing supersedence work that had already been done by the calling instance of wuaueng.dll!CUpdatesToPruneList::AddSupersedenceInfoIfNeeded
May account for ~93% of excess CPU usage. (overlaps completely with the 99.8% figure above, as do the next two)

ntdll.dll!RtlQueryPerformanceFrequency:
“Retrieves the frequency of the performance counter. The frequency of the performance counter is fixed at system boot and is consistent across all processors. Therefore, the frequency need only be queried upon application initialization, and the result can be cached.” – Microsoft

They called this function about 3,270,000 times during the 2 hour check for updates. Microsoft says “Only call this once, it won’t change between boots”, Microsoft calls it 3.27 MILLION times. Windows update is slow.

May account for ~42% of excess CPU usage. (This is called directly by wuaueng.dll!CSusMap<tagDSGlobalUpdateId;CUpdateDetectInfo;CSusSortedArrayListItemOpsBasic;CUpdateDetectInfo>::_tagMapEntry::_tagMapEntry — which is called by wuaueng.dll!CUpdateDetectInfoList::FindNewestUpdate)

wuaueng.dll!CSusSortedArrayList<CSusMap<tagDSGlobalUpdateId;CUpdateDetectInfo;CSusSortedArrayListItemOpsBasic;CUpdateDetectInfo>::_tagMapEntry;CSusMap<tagDSGlobalUpdateId;CUpdateDetectInfo;CSusSortedArrayListItemOpsBasic;CUpdateDetectInfo>::CMapEntryOps>::InternalCompare
May account for ~16% of excess CPU usage. (This is called by wuaueng.dll!CUpdateDetectInfoList::FindNewestUpdate)

In 7/8, short of there being something wrong (like connectivity issues or problems in the server side), I think the primary reasons for this problem are a) that you’re way behind on updating (it really has to think hard to present you with a list of, say, 100 items), or b) you have years and years of updates already installed (which I think the system combs through each time to see what you have installed).

There’s a tremendous free program program called PatchCleaner that very quickly and efficiently helps with the last problem, and frees up GBs of space on well-used systems (which is its main reason for being).http://homedev.com.au/Free/PatchCleaner

Two Win7 VMs, both up to date with the most recent WU/MU, have been stuck at 100% CPU utilization with the familiar svchost spike for the past 6 hours while checking for updates.

The failure of Win 7 WU/MU to timely check for and install updates is long standing and well known. After so many months of suffering through inadequate performance I have come to believe that it can’t be due to anything other than a conscious decision by Microsoft. Even giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that this circumstance is not a planned result the continuing failure to rectify the situation is undoubtedly deliberate.

Two hours plus checking for updates just to show me 16 updates to be downloaded. Placed most in hide and downloaded 5 microsoft word updates. Windows 7 SP1 home premium. My computer is set to never check for updates. Changed it back to check for updates, but let me choose whether to download and install them and everything was still the same.Hours updating. Also all my hidden updates disappeared through all this. Now they are back after running three check for updates. Checked for updates tonight and in one minute said no updates???? I have a friend in Oregon, one in Fresno, Calif. and my computer in Southern Calif. and what I described here happened to all three of us exactly the same.
Sincerely,
Herb

My fellow WIn 7 users-I too have noticed how the updates for patch tuesday are taking ages to scan and detect the updates. Normally I’d get them after 35-40 mins-50 at most and then shut down, install them, then defrag computer and be about my day. I do it at midnight wednesday the day after patch tuesday so I don’t gotta handle it in the morning.

THis is downright ridiculous and annoying. MICROSOFT’S WIN 10 campaignis terrorizing us users to get our updates faster and go about our day. I FOR ONE HAVE HAD IT! I say we march to each microsoft contact:facebook,twitter, tumblr, main page-even phone number and voice our concerns. WE WILL NOT BE LIBERATED AND CONFORMED TO WIN 10!WE <3 OUR WINDOWS NO MATTER IF ITS XP,VISTA,7,8 or below! LET US UNITE AND TELL MICROSOFT TO STOP THIS AND SHOW RESPECT FOR OLDER WINDOWS!

Greetings from Australia. Microsoft Security Essentials did not automatically update itself today. This is unusual. I waited 45 minutes for a MSE update to be automatically downloaded and installed. No problem yesterday, or for the past few weeks. I manually installed the MSE update from the Microsoft web site. No previous problems with Windows Update. Have now waited for 3 hours with Windows update running to check for updates. (I used the Check for updates button.) So far no response. My Windows update settings are to check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them. I have installed KB3138612.

This issue is not just related to Win7/8. I still have 2 Vista laptops that suffer from the same problem. My old(er) one (8 yrs., core2duo) tooka about 4 hrs yesterday before presenting me with the updates. It never took this long, not even the previous months, so I can confirm GK’s rant. Normally it took 30-45 min. max., the last couple of months about 2-2½ hrs. My other laptop (3rd gen core i7) needed a bit more than 2 hrs. where normally it took about 15 minutes max.

All those KB’s everybody else has been writing about never were for Vista, Vista only got the ‘bare essentials’. Therefore my takeaway from this is that it must be something at Microsoft’s end.

FWIW… KB3139852 was the one that helped the WU time related issue for all of my Windows 7 (x64) systems. I installed ONLY that patch from the list last month as an experiment and haven’t been waiting long for results through all the steps of the manual update process since. After seeing the results on the test system I installed that patch on the other 3 systems a few days later and they too seem to be “healed”.

Before installing that patch it was a minimum of 20-30 minutes watching zero progress after each step along the way. I’ve installed all of the other patches in small groups on all of the systems just to see the wait time and each process begins within a couple minutes on all of them now.

I installed KB3139852 as recommended by Noel Carboni a few weeks back, and it did stop this crazy long svchost.exe CPU usage issue. However, as of yesterday (when the new updates were posted), it has started again. I was thinking/hoping it was just going to happen the first time since there were new updates for Windows Update to “find” but it just happened again this morning, so it looks like it’s back to how it was before with this happening every time you turn on your computer.

Noel, Woody, anybody — any thoughts on why this has started up again and what to do about it this time? Thanks!

I’m curious, are users that are experiencing extremely long update checks doing manual checks for updates or are users allowing their machines to do the automatic update checks?

Could the issue be that manual checks for updates around the Patch Tuesday time frame are causing server bottlenecks? Is it possible that allowing machines to tap into MS’s update servers on MS’s own schedule facilitates a faster check for updates?

For every response in this thread I’d be really interested to know how many people are doing manual update checks?

The reason I ask is because yesterday, on patch Tuesday, 4-12-16 @ 7:04am, I booted up my W7 SP1 x64 Quad core machine and it immediately went to auto check for updates. 15 minutes later, no new updates were offered (I’m on Check but let me decide…).

I’ve noted in the past that auto checks seem to run on a once every 12-16 hour schedule. So, this morning 4-13-16, on boot up at 6:30am, there was no auto check for updates.

Rather than do a manual check for updates I will wait out the usual 16 hour time frame, which should bring me to around 11:00am EST. I’ll hold off doing a manual check for updates and I’ll see what transpires, time wise, on the auto check for updates.

lol I just clean installed 64-bit Win 7 Pro SP1 on my brother’s PC followed by WSUSOffline’s latest pack and the latest manufacturer drivers on a Z77 based MB. I also added EMET 5.5 and GWX Control Panel. Then I connected to the Internet and ran Windows Update…three hours later I couldn’t believe it still was f-ing around so I shut down and went home.

I turned off my windows update by clicking “Never check for updates”-ITS GETTING A TIME OUT FOR THE DAY and tonight I plan to leave the computer on, WHEN IT GETS THE UPDATES-I am shutting it down so the updates install, I’ll defrag it in the morning.

Still this is ridiculous-FOR ME it too 25-50 minutes/1 hr to scan for updates, it finds them and then installs them when I shut down, then I turn back on computer, then defragment and such-i got a system of how I do my patch tuesday and computer cleaning.

BUT I WAITED AGES for my update this morninG-1 HR AND 5 MINUTES, NOTHING. I am not patient and i AIN’T WAITING ALL DAY for the updates-I got stuff to do, things to watch and work in the evening. So i am gonna try again tonight in the late evening before bed.

Microsoft-you just pissed off your windows predecessors and its users-And were tired of your crap to treat Windows 10 like a freakin king……….A STORM is coming and were gonna bring it to you.

So guys I say we message, email, live chat, call and everything to tell Microsoft off and tell em how we feel about this conspiracy! I agree with GK-SOMETHING foul is afoot and its time we users take matters into our own hands!

In my limited experience, it takes a long time both using manual and automatic updates. Of course, it’s hard to time everything – there are so many variations, and I don’t have any baselines to work from. But subjectively it’s much, much longer than it used to be.

Looks like I’m not the only one having trouble with Windows Update. Mine is set to notify ONLY, and NOT download or install. So far this morning, My laptop has been trying to do a Windows Update for 6 hours, and NOTHING has happened. It is STILL “Checking for Updates”. I finally got through to Microsoft about 30 minutes ago, and all they would tell me is that they can help me with this “KNOWN PROBLEM”, but it will cost me $40 per hour or part of an hour to do it. I just hung up. I am not completely fed up with all the BS Microsoft is dealing out. IF I can get this computer running smoothly again, it will NOT EVER be connected to the internet again ! !

For just over 2 weeks now my WU process (auto or manual) has taken 1-2 minutes to run.
Today, my laptop’s WU auto-check took nearly 6 hours with typical CPU usage of 45%, producing 15 new updates. Oh, and KB3139852 has disappeared from my Hidden list.

I usually hide all new updates until I get the green light from your good self as it makes it easier for me to identify any revisions or new additions in the meantime.

I duly hid all 15 this time and as an experiment I manually checked for updates….it took 1 minute!! Colour me perplexed!

Fyi, as per the lists occasionally mentioned by contributors, the newest WU Client I have installed is KB3050265.

Tried Windows 10, don’t like it one bit. Now, with this nonsense, I am a step closer to ditching Microsoft altogether, everything, and moving to Linux. I have installed Linux Mint on a spare hard drive, and I like what I see.

Well, auto update check kicked in just about 16 hours after the last auto update check yesterday, as I had anticipated.
That said, after the past couple of months of having 15 minute checks for updates, this took at least 40 minutes. No idea why but I can surmise now that manual check for updates is not the sole culprit for long update checks…

Plus, KB3139852, which I had been holding, but NOT hidden, in case I wanted to install, disappeared. Yet K3139398, which I had hidden, is still hidden.

Looks like I was notified of 6 security updates which includes one .NET and then 5 Optional including our friend 2664 again.

“QueryPerformanceFrequency retrieves the frequency of the performance counter. The frequency of the performance counter is fixed at system boot and is consistent across all processors. Therefore, the frequency need only be queried upon application initialization, and the result can be cached.” – Microsoft

They called this function about 3,270,000 times during the 2 hour check for updates. Microsoft says “Only call this once, it won’t change between boots”, Microsoft calls it 3.27 MILLION times. Windows update is slow.

I can only imagine what other possible improvements to optimization that aren’t this blatantly obvious could do for the update check speed.

I am a very simple Windows 7 Home SP1 user. I usually have WU set To Never Check For Updates. Once a month, after checking on Askwoody, and decide to run a manual check for updates, what has seemed to work better for me was once I set it to Check but let me choose, it would go straight into checking for updates for a long period of time. I would then do a “Restart” on the laptop. Once I did that, it seems WU had run much quicker. After downloading and installing, if any, I would then set it back To Not Check For Updates until the following month.

Thanks Jonathan,
I found those but their not clear about what for.
I have a notebook PC with Win.7 Sp1 Home Edition.
With AMD dual 8Gb.Mem.
It’been working fine until yesterday.When it crashed my AVG. I checked for updates have them. Have not loaded any. I left the PC running overnight and still this morning the Resource Monitor is still Prefeching files and writing to them to the disk.The Network from the router keeps uploading things to the disc to read and write.
Those updates mentioned. Some say they are for A server. which don’t have.They are not clear if they have Win.10 our not?
I will look them up again. But scared to install anything anymore! I’ll wait to install them.
The CPU is 0/1% Mem a constant 35% where it used to be at 18/20%
I have GWX running all of the time.Ijust wanted to know if anyone has installed any of these? Were there problems?
Thanks Again,
Darcia,

Thanks Woody,
I’LL wait!!
As I said to Jonathan.
This morning after leaving the PC on overnight.
It’s still prefecthing reading and writing to the disc.CPU 0/1% Mem.@ 35% The system is a HP.notebook,
AMD Dual, 8 Gb.Mem. 750 Gb Hard drive.

Hi All:
Forgot to mention, yesterday my Avira anti virus was turned off and my windows firewall also was turned off and I had 55 Microsoft word updates installed on April 12, 2015. This was all happening while the Tuesday updates were taking place. I did not touch my computer and had no knowledge of these 55 updates being installed. Turned windows firewall back on and my Avira anti virus and late Tuesday everything is back to normal. Updates show in one minute now I’m staying on never check for updates on my Windows 7 Also a computer friend of mine pointed out something to me yesterday when the Microsoft updates were not functioning. He said when this happens check your start button if a yellow symbol shows with a black exclamation point, the updates will not finish . you must perform a restart and they will work. Mine had the symbal in yellow with the black exclamation point. Restarted and it worked. ???????????????
Herb

@pim: I did a Windows Update scan on a custom built PC with Windows Vista SP2 using an Intel Pentium D 3.40Ghz (dual-core) CPU & 2Gb of RAM and it took more than 3 hours to check for Vista updates & WU finally displayed a long list of updates to install.

Anyways Windows Vista will become a “lost cause” as Microsoft will drop extended support for all editions of Vista on April 11, 2017 as noted here:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?C2=11732
That means no more new Vista updates being released beyond 4/11/2017.

so you better upgrade your 2 old laptops from using Vista to at least Win7 by April 2017. Google Chrome web browsers released beyond April 2016 will require minimum Windows 7 as Google has dropped XP & Vista support this April 2016. I’ve already upgraded my cousin’s HP dv6000 series home entertainment laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7 a few months ago and will do the same for my custom built PC.

Last night, it took 45 minutes to search. Tried to download the Malicious Software Removal Tool and gave up after 20 minutes. (I won’t let the machine stay on overnight.)

This morning, it took about 1hr:15minutes to search, and half an hour to update MSSE virus definitions, but the downloads (MSRT and a couple of Office 2010 updates) went OK. On the other hand, this afternoon, it says those three updates are “ready to be downloaded”, though they show up on my installed update list. Arggh!

(On the gripping hand, it took a couple of minutes to search for MSSE updates, but it’s stuck in the download queue.)

Hey, if you have multiple computers, try the following:
1) Check for updates on one of them.
2) Write down the KB numbers
3) Download the updates manually from microsoft.com
4) Distribute and install the updates manually.

The first step still takes very long, but if an update fails you can save a lot of time.

OK, after another hour and 15 minutes checking for updates, WU agrees that I really did install those three. I’ve got Slackware Linux on an old machine, and am thinking of installing something similar on an inexpensive laptop. (I’ve heard good things about the off-lease Dell machines.) If I can find a replacement for Quicken, I’m about ready to toss Windows…

I also have the same problem. I open Windows Updates via the Control Panel and do a check. It just sits there. Even after an hour, it still does nothing. This has been going on for over two years, and I noticed everyone here has the same problem. I think it has something to do with the update for the Windows Update client. I wonder if removing it would improve things.

In all it took me 8 hours involving 3 computer sessions to be notified of updates that were available and to install them. The computer is a bit slower in starting up and in doing everyday tasks. Don’t know why! I am investigating what is going on with process explorer. I am not impressed with this. Microsoft please fix this problem!

Similar thing has happened to me: Last month 3 machines all stopped their daily checking for updates and the CPU went up to 50%, so I spent 3 weeks running every Fixit etc., that I could find, including manually downloading KB3138612. Finally I downloaded KB3139852 and they all started working again with no slowness. A couple of Defender updates also came through and installed so I thought all was OK – WRONG! Exactly the same thing started again yesterday – I’m pretty certain it’s when this months patches came through – although of course since everything is no longer working I can’t be certain!

I don’t see how this can be an issue with all 3 machines, and since different users seem to have slightly different problems, albeit all with the slowness and high CPU, I can only think that it’s down to which updates have been installed, and which ones have been hidden – which of course shouldn’t happen – SORT IT OUT MS!

The only thing that does seem to solve it for many is this thread created on MS Community by the OP Ken Morley (xx spoke about this a while ago). The only disadvantage though is that you have to go back to OOB state and those with older computers (like me) will have years of updates to catch up on, let alone all of the programs amassed over this time.

Well, I guess I’m resorting back to killing the Windows Update service in Task Manager for now. My laptop even smells “hot” right now from it happening again. But that service even turns itself back at at some point.

I know someone on here mentioned that it might be bad to kill that service…? Would it be better to just set Windows Updates to “Never Check for Updates” for now, and just then just check manually myself when it’s time to actually install security updates (when you give the monthly okay)?

For me it’s because I don’t want to find out afterward that one of my users had a problem that would have been solved by a particular update, after which I would have to spend time figuring the problem out, then spend more time finding the solution, then spend more time finding the patch, downloading it, and installing it, all the while my user’s workflow has been disrupted.

I prefer avoiding the problem by installing patches for known problems and security issues in advance, during off-hours. And it’s that extension of time this takes during off-hours that I’m (you’re quite right) whining about. (Although I prefer Woody’s characterization of “rant” to your characterization of “whining.”)

Though it doesn’t make sense to you, apparently this approach makes sense to Microsoft, since they label some patches “Critical” and they have instituted a policy of forcing patches they think are necessary on Windows 10 users.

It’s also ironic that people are looking for (and installing) a bunch of updates – when we still haven’t had enough time to see which ones are causing problems. At the moment, I know of three Office security patches that are throwing errors. That’s only part of the problems, and it’s still too early to tell if other patches have bad side-effects.

I do review the summary, but only after I know which updates I need, which circles back to the original rant/whine: It’s taking way too long to get the update list. I had one system (Win7/Ent/SP1, fast, dual-core processor, SSD, 4g RAM) take five hours to generate a list. Below you’ll see a report from someone else who also experienced this. Other systems took from 45 minutes to three hours. That’s just crazy. It didn’t used to be this bad, and it’s been getting worse month by month.

Also, reviewing the summary doesn’t tell me much anymore, so it’s hard to judge which updates to install. Used to be much more information.

Last, and really this is a separate issue, often you don’t know which updates are problematic until days (sometimes weeks) later. That’s a problem with Microsoft’s internal, pre-release testing, from which it appears they’ve taken away resources.

From a fresh install of Windows 7 it’s near impossible to get it to update. The only solution that I’ve found is to disable Windows update and use what’s known as the “Simplix Pack”. The support website isn’t in English, but they tell you whats in the pack each month and it fixes the problem that MS refuse to fix.

I have been working this for some time and as near as I can figure out…
Microsoft stopped supporting XP and Vista and apparently just unplugged that server like a toaster oven leaving an open line and update will simply search forever for updates that are not there ^..^

LMAO, MS does not care, they’re laughing at you (and me!) for such a remark, if they even see this, since we must assume there is a “they” who are “MS”. I have a pain in the very pit of my stomach. It has come to this: “Don’t live too long, Carly, everything you know how to use, while your brain is still young and facile enough to know anything at all, will be disappearing right out from under you, if you outlive it.” I’m, let me think…oh yeah, 66.

Would be interesting to “just know” where my comment from around 2 wks ago went, and the good reply I may have gotten. Doing the obvious has not led me to it, or anywhere near it. So it’s another, “You just know that. Or else you don’t.” Like most else.

Wait a minute here, I’m not anonymous. Being anonymous doesn’t give any satisfaction for at least having followed up that I now KNOW that I know not, as well as unable to find my earlier comment and it’s reply. I am Carly Corday or Carlotta Corday. Not anonymous here. You’ve got my email. But you don’t know my name to autofill from last time, so I don’t have to undergo hypnosis. (By YOU, I obviously refer to a “they” who’s to blame for this. Not members, anonymous commenters, or anyone like that.)

The poster name – in this case “Anonymous” is either filled in by you, or picked up from an earlier post with the “Anonymous” name. I only have your email because you entered it in the box on the comment page. And I never, ever post or use email addresses.

Plus Membership

Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.

AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments. Click here for details and to sign up.